The title, simply named ‘Dizzy Returns’, will be produced for iOS by developer Blitz Games.

“It’s been 20 years since the last game in the original series (Crystal Kingdom Dizzy) and he’s not been seen in a new adventure since then. But with your help we can set that right!,” says the Kickstarter page.

“We’ve always believed in creating games that are fun, challenging and rewarding, and we’ve carried those principles through into everything that our company, Blitz Games Studios, has created since.”

“Our aim is not to just reboot an old Dizzy game though. We want to stay true to the spirit and core ideals of the original series, whilst utilising the platforms, technology and resources we now have at our disposal. We believe that Dizzy Returns is a perfect fit for mobile gaming, and touch screen technology obviously means that we can experiment with and implement new mechanics and new ways of playing in Dizzy Returns.”

Here’s a direct message from the Oliver twins:

Dizzy Returns needs a total of £350,000 to succeed. Are you going to stump up the cash to make this happen?

Organisers for the one-day Develop Liverpool event have confirmed more developers to speak at it, including Bizarre Creations, Codemasters’ F1 dev team, Disney, Sony and more.

Bizarre’s Charnjit Bansl and Disney Black Rock’s Nick Baynes will talk about making racers with both Blur and Split/Second, while Codies’ Paul Jeal and Stephen Hood carry out a “post-mortem” on F1 2010 following its release at the end of next month.

Sony will send 3D boss Mick Hocking to keynote the event in a speech called “Seeing is Believing: 3D a New Creative Medium for Games”, while Evolution Studios’ Matt Southern will show the making of Motorstorm: Apocalypse.

Traveller’s Tales’ Arthur Pearsons and Blitz Games’ Philip Oliver will also be at the event.

Develop Liverpool takes place on November 25.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2010/10/06/bizarre-codemasters-disney-all-confirmed-for-develop-liverpool/feed/1Oliver on Blitz Arcade and Blitz 1>UP – “Digital distribution is the future”http://www.vg247.com/2009/06/29/oliver-on-blitz-arcade-and-blitz-1up-digital-distribution-is-the-future/
http://www.vg247.com/2009/06/29/oliver-on-blitz-arcade-and-blitz-1up-digital-distribution-is-the-future/#commentsMon, 29 Jun 2009 10:26:25 +0000up]]>http://www.vg247.com/?p=43299UP, an in-house program designed to help tiny developers see their titles become commercial products. And why not? Oliver says that digital distribution allows for “experimental” games, micro-payments and piracy […]]]>

Blitz boss Philip Oliver has told VG247 that he believes digital distribution is “the future” for smaller games, and has outlined progress made with Blitz 1>UP, an in-house program designed to help tiny developers see their titles become commercial products.

And why not? Oliver says that digital distribution allows for “experimental” games, micro-payments and piracy protection, as well as tapping into a flourishing market being spearheaded by the likes of XBLA and Steam.

If you’re a one- or two-man band struggling to get your game made, you’d do well to look past the link for details on Blitz 1>UP. You may be famous yet.

Hit it, innit.

Interview by Stephany Nunneley.

Blitz chief Philip Oliver believes in digital distribution. Big time.

“Digital distribution is the future,” he tells VG247. “We’re excited by it and we’re doing lots of it through Blitz Arcade.”

It’s not hot air. The UK developer and publisher has put his money where his mouth is.

“We established Blitz Arcade, which is one of our divisions, to focus on the new era of digital distribution,” he says, citing the model’s advantages as the reason for the company’s focus.

“Putting out a physical medium means such an investment in distribution costs. [Digital Distribution] also cuts piracy and allows micro-purchases, because at the moment when you sell a game in boxes you have to make the retail price $20 plus. Quite often it’s $40 plus.

“This doesn’t actually allow you to create smaller, more experimental games, whereas with digital distribution, you can charge a lot less to the end-user and they expect a lot less, but it means you can play more and be more experimental.”

Oliver adds that the current generation had opened up the market for a different breed of game.

“Certainly, I remember pitching some puzzle games on PS2, and you couldn’t do it,” he says. “It was only a boxed market and nobody would pay $30-$40 for what was fundamentally a puzzle game. Even if the puzzle game was brilliant, it was only when digital distribution came along that you had the likes of Zuma and Bejeweled really take off.”

Unfortunately, though, very small games made by very small developers often face problems inherent with economies of scale. As in, it’s difficult for a few people to make anything.

Blitz has addressed the issue with a scheme to leverage its internally resources to help micro-developers hit the big time. Or the “time,” at least.

“As a developer we can almost become a digital publisher,” Oliver explains. “How then do we develop the games?

“Well, we can develop the games internally. Blitz has got 255 staff at the moment… but one of the beauties is that you can create these smaller, more experimental games. We may come up with those, but actually there are other people out there that may come up with them, smaller developers, even as small as one- or two-man bands. But the problem very small developers have is [getting development hardware] and actually going through the whole development process.

“They may come up with a really good idea. They may be great artists, but they have no programmers. They may be great programmers, but have no artists. They may be able to do art and programming, but not audio or QA, or not know how to bring it to market.

Blitz 1>UP is the answer, said Oliver.

“What we’re doing is introduce the Blitz 1>UP scheme, which is us partnering with the smaller developer to find out what their ideas are and work with them to say, ‘Where do you need help?’ And basically try to see if there’s a way that we can help them bring their game to market.

“We’ve done a few of those now. There’s Buccaneer, which has now gone live on Steam. There’s Aftermath, which is going live on a bunch of the PC portals. We’re talking to both those guys about trying to get them onto XBLA: we can sort out the dev kits, stuff like that.”

Since we recorded this interview, another Blitz title, Droplitz, has been released to XBLA.

Don’t get too excited, though, mini-devs. Such help isn’t free.

“It’s kind of altruistic, but it’s good business as well at the end of the day,” Oliver added.

“These guys are small teams and are very enthusiastic… but they need our help. Equally, we will make a commercial decision and say, ‘Here’s the cut we’re going to take,’ or, ‘Here’s what we’re going to give you.’ Sometimes we’ve actually helped out financially, because the guys just needed money to pay the bills.”

Boxed product is, like, so doomed. Not so fast. While digital distribution may work for the smaller titles, Oliver’s quick to add that boxes will be with us for a long time yet. Online models may be “the future,” but not for the mega-budget projects.

“No, no,” Oliver said when asked if we’re nearing a world where developers can completely side-step publishers en masse. “We love publishers. Don’t get me wrong.

“I think digital distribution is great for small games, but I kind of liken the games industry and digital distribution to the film industry, where you have your blockbuster – which you will go and watch at the cinema, you will go and buy on DVD or Blu-ray – but you’ve also got broadcast on TV.

“Broadcast TV is equivalent to the digital download and smaller games, and that’s where we can become publishers, but on the big blockbuster games, no, we don’t want to become publishers in that area.”

Despite the enthusiasm for downloads, Oliver said, it’ll be “many years” before we make a meaningful switch away from boxed product.

“Digital distribution is mainly for the smaller, more novel games. The games with smaller budgets, under a few hundred thousand dollars. Yet, the world still wants blockbuster games, and those blockbuster games deserve to have boxes.”

“Blitz has created the first console software solution for rendering games for 3D TVs,” Blitz‘s Philip Oliver told us at GDC yesterday.

It’s another gimmick, right? Oliver is convinced not. So is the British journalist that sent us frantic MSN messages past midnight last week after seeing the tech demoed at the developer’s UK offices.

“Pat, no shit,” he said. “This is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in games for years. I can’t believe it.”

Word for word. He’d been shown a game running at 1080p and 120 frames a second, 60 frames for each eye. Steph saw it in San Francisco yesterday, and all you can hear on the recording in response is a stunned, “Wow.”

When Steph mailed last night, she said, “That 3D game was VERY impressive, by the way.”

And before you start, yes, we’re aware that Blitz is sponsoring the site for GDC. And no, that doesn’t mean we’re lying. Hit the link for the transcript of the demo.

[Long intro from Oliver about 3D media in general, how all Disney CG movies are going to be produced in 3D from now on, how the film industry’s backing 3D and how 3D functionality’s being built into current TVs.]

Oliver – Everyone’s doing different technologies… I personally believe that circular polarization is probably the one that’s going to take off, but they’re all doing different types, and some of the manufacturers are backing all the horses. The movies are going to be something like a year away, because they’ve got to agree on formats, both the digital formats and the physical formats, and they’ve got to decide how to address it in the TVs, because inside the TVs they’ve got to decode the signals as well.

In the electronics industry, they all want to be the format holder, so they’re all doing it completely differently. So, if someone was to produce a player, which format do they write the signal in, because each TV’s going to be different?

However, with the consoles, we can actually write software drivers. We were told by Sony, Microsoft and several other people in the industry that it would be impossible, because of the rendering speed required. Well, we though, perhaps it can be done. We know of an extremely fast rendering engine, in our technology. So let’s have a go.

This game was in development. It’s called Invincible Tiger and it’s from Namco Bandai. We were already shooting for 1080p at 60 frames a second. Now, one of the problems of the standards of 3D TVs is that a lot of them say they absolutely have to be 1080p, 60 frames a second. A couple of them will work at lower resolutions, but if you want to go out there with a game that can work on any of the 3D TVs, if you’re at 1080p, 60 frames a second, it’ll work on one. You’ve got to get your rendering engine up fast enough to do that.

Also, slightly worse than that, that will only give you one image for one eye. You’ve got to produce 1080p, 60 frames a second, but you’ve got to produce a left and right eye image, so effectively you’re almost rendering 120 frames per second. That’s fast. I mean, think of Unreal. They have problems going to 60 frames a second.

Without further ado, let’s show you the results of our game running at 1080p, 120 frames per second, and you can tell us if you think it’s any good.

Steph – Wow. Wow.

Oliver – That’s the reaction there’s supposed to be.

Steph – Oh my gosh.

Oliver – It’s awesome.

Steph – It is awesome.

Oliver – One of the things we found annoying was that when we said we were going to do this, all the blogs said, ‘Yeah yeah yeah, it’ll be rubbish.’ No. See it, then say it. It isn’t rubbish, is it?

Steph [laughing] – No. I actually backed up there for a second… Wow.

Oliver – Blitz has created the first console software solution for rendering games for 3D TVs.

[Oliver goes on to explain that the game may or may not ship with the 3D functionality, and it’s unlikely anyone will know whether or not they’ve got the right TV to view it even it is. Also, you need the right set of glasses to see it.]

Steph – How far is this off the mainstream?

Oliver – Mainstream’s a little bit longer, but remember that gamers are early adopters. It was the Xbox 360 and gamers that drive HD TVs to market, and actually accelerated the adoption of HD TV. We’ve got some figures. I think it’s 5 million installed by the end of the year, and I think it’s 10 million by the end of next year and 25 million by the end of the following year.

When do you call it mass market? It’s going to be in the top-end TVs. There’s no point having it in an 18-inch screen.

[Oliver says that the inclusion of 3D functionality into TVs doesn’t cost a great deal]

We can accelerate it. If this was in shops in a month’s time, the TVs are going to sell a lot faster. I think the game industry can accelerate it.

Steph – How do you see Blitz moving it forward?

Oliver – Our talk today was a call to arms to tell the trade to embrace 3D TV. It’s not a gimmick. It is the future, and it’s here now, so start developing for it now. I will say, that some developers aren’t going to have fast enough engines – whether or not they’re their own engines or they’re licensing it – but that’s something they can come to us for. in our talk today we gave a lot of advice on what the technical issues are and how to solve those technical issues.

If you’re a developer and you want to get in touch with BlitzTech or find out more about the firm’s 3D tech, hit this.